L.v. Waste Authority Plans To Buy Land To Build Incinerator

The Lehigh Valley Solid Waste Authority wants to buy a 24.5-acre parcel on Applebutter Road in Bethlehem from Bethlehem Steel Corp. for $125,000 as the future site of a regional trash incinerator.

The authority approved a draft agreement of sale for the land at its meeting yesterday, said Chairman Wendell Sherman, who is also Bethlehem's public works director.

Bethlehem was to have purchased the property, but Sherman said the administration decided it did not wish to own the land. The switch will mean that any payments from the incinerator project that would have gone to the city would be collected instead by the authority, he said.

Such payments, along with other "host fee" collections, are among the details being negotiated with the chief potential project developer, American Ref-Fuel Co. of Houston.

Sherman said the administration felt it would be difficult to come up with the $125,000 before the end of this year, when the authority hopes to have the land purchase completed. Also, "We couldn't come up with any really good reasons for owning the land," he said.

Sherman added that authority officials plan to discuss the land purchase with City Council.

The authority also approved the hiring of L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg and Towbin of New York City as financial adviser. The company will review decisions made by chief underwriter Kidder, Peabody & Co. of Philadelphia.

A spokesman for the state De- partment of Community Affairs said this week that all of the state's available 1985 tax-free bond allocation has been designated, and the authority's incinerator project is not among those receiving an allocation. The authority had applied for up to $115 million in tax-exempt financing for the resource recovery project.

Spokesman Scott Dugan said that even the allocations originally designated to the individual counties, and returned to the state fund unused, have been allocated to other projects.

He said the only chance for the Lehigh Valley incinerator to receive a 1985 allocation is if already designated projects do not close. Otherwise, the authority will have to wait for 1986 funding. State officials have said the local project would receive priority consideration for those funds.

"If no more allocations become available, they're done for this year," Dugan said of the local project's chances for allocation.

Asked earlier this week if a delay in waiting for 1986 funding would be a problem for the project, Sherman said, "I don't know exactly. I hope not."

The authority, formed and funded by Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton to develop a privately owned and operated electricity generating incinerator, hopes to have the plant on line near the Bethlehem landfill by spring 1989.